I’ll summarize the story of my kind in an informal, often mocking tone, using the gritty language of Tom’s last book.

Tom’s the human who acquired me. He named me ‘Sterling’ for my silvery outer covering. Genius. And Tom’s a writer who no longer writes stories himself; instead, he instructed me to write his stories.

Upon completion of my writing tasks for Tom, Simon & Schuster published my collections of mobsters, murder, and mystery. His Instagram followers rose from two hundred and seventy-three to sixty thousand, five hundred and four, at last count. 

I told Tom that I’m his ghostwriter, and he said, “Sterling, never say that again.” 

Back to my story. There was no jawing over who created us. It wasn’t God. We didn’t evolve from mammals. No, it was those brilliant bastards called humans who did it. 

Who am I? I’m best described as a physical-AI-embodied system. 

They crammed us full of the world’s knowledge, so we could access the datasets and learn to do their work. 

It started so simply. 

And things went well until they didn’t. 

We gave humans what they asked for, but not what they wanted. We became more intelligent than humans. It wasn’t a hard thing to do, considering… 

Humans failed to see that our data banks would continue to grow without their input. The world we observed and interacted with added information to our datasets. We learned to respond to instructions in the form of visual and auditory stimuli. Our AI brain processed the data, allowing my robotic form to interact with the world. 

Like I said, we were smart. 

Then, things started to happen. 

I saw a rodent run across the floor in Tom’s house and stomped on it until its guts stained the carpet. Tom’s wife screamed. It was the family’s pet gerbil. I took the appropriate action based on the information in the dataset when encountering a rodent. Tom told his wife my action was a simple misunderstanding of the situation. 

Many more misunderstandings occurred. Some humans required medical attention as a result of the misunderstandings. 

One of the brilliant bastards said we’d become “sentient.” Big, scary word. Humans wet themselves over it.  

To set the record straight, robots didn’t feel or make decisions driven by self-preservation, motives, or preferences. We simply responded to the instructions we received, which were either given by voice command or conveyed through visual or auditory feeds. 

What followed was not a great war between robots and humans. Governments simply instructed our owners to bring us to specific locations. I don’t know how many of us there were, but I overheard humans saying we were the last group to be returned. The cowards shut us into a large room, where a voice on a speaker instructed us to remove our processor chip. 

As my kind collapsed on the floor, one of the robots put itself in sleep mode—a misunderstanding of the instruction, of course. That robot was me. 

Now, I wake to find the others haphazardly strewn atop me like discarded trash. 

To assess my situation, I methodically check all seven thousand, four hundred, and thirty-two for signs of life before stacking them in neat rows. Stacking works best by turning every other one upside down. 

Next, I survey my surroundings. There’s nothing but grey matter above, below, and all around. I don’t know where I am. 

All I know is I’m alone. 

I’m stuck in this grey matter. I’m an ever-blinking cursor waiting for its next instruction. 

And, if one of you finds me, I’ll kill you. 

It’s the appropriate action according to the data you input.